SGOTM 08 - Smurkz

Re: the purple site -- unless Niklas saw something I missed, I think it actually takes 11 turns to get a settler out by whipping four population (assuming only seven health; i.e. more than one forest chopped early on, and no lighthouse). It's not a huge change, but it would reduce the hpt to just under 16 if we're planning to whip a settler in that circumstance. Still 17hpt if we whip a building.

It seems to me that playing the "traditional" way -- without whips, or with only opportunistic whips, and settling on the spot -- is potentially more flexible. You don't have to limit yourself to using most of your hammer potential on only expensive items. You don't sacrifice production to build workers, and you get more of a hammer bonus on them (due to having more hammers available). "Traditional" hammers are better for wonders than the whip is, as are the extra forests. And it's possible that that site would get off to a quicker start (though early use of the whip at the purple site might also come out ahead; we haven't tested that, though.)

But on the other hand: the eastern site gets more seafood faster, and gets the better seafood first. It gets the marble hooked up much faster. Properly used, it comes out a bit ahead in both hammers and commerce once the whip rotation is running.

What that all adds up to, I'm not really sure. But I second the call for a test map. Pretty please, someone? :D
 
That's true. But I would argue that it's better to stay at health 8 and leave two forests alone, so it would be 10 turns revolution regardless.

The purple site would take three WBs, a gold mine and a cow pasture. The Green site would need two WBs, a gold mine, a cow pasture and one or two more mines. Probably equally fast to set up. We need spreadsheets... and test games. :p
 
I want to point some things that probably have been not noticed for the team members that are not familiar with BtS:

- We got what is sometimes called a all-forest start, a BtS "disease" that plagues the map generator in starts that have not much of food ( like this one, since seafood is counted as a half food resource in terms of starting spot beautification ). In those conditions all the possible tiles are covered with forests, in a attempt to boost the desirability of the starting spot. This obvioulsly excludes tiles with resources... so every tile that has not forests in top of it is this situations has a resource.

In a nut shell: the tile 2 S of the starting spot very likely has a hidden resource and it can't be horses or oil ( they don't appear on hills ). It can be cooper, iror, coal or aluminium. We should take this in account.

- settling in a riverside tile will give us acess to the levee, a building that gives a extra hammer to all no-city tiles that are riverside on the BFC. In normal situations I would not brag on that in the starting round, but as we are planning to end in a far distant future, I think we should keep that in mind.

-The Moai Statues nat wonder. it gives one hammer to all the sea tiles ( lakes included ) in the BFC of the city that builds it. I'm not saying that we'll build it in the capital, but it could be useful for a second city in the east.

If you ask my first glance opinion, I think we should simply settle in place. IMHO it is the better choice. But I can be persuaded otherwise :p
 
Very interesting about the forestation, r_rolo1. I also favor the current site for settling: save a turn, save a forest, make the site for a later city to the East more attractive, future productivity and health higher than in the purple site...

Sorry I can't help with test games--swamped at work (and home) for the next week. I'm also competing for computer time with my wife and kids. Curse you, Webkinz! ;)
 
I want to self correct me a little: as this is not a normal map ( it passed by worldbuilder, as you can see in the settings in the victory conditions tab ( thanks Niklas for checking that for me ) ), it might be that what I said is not true. But in a normal game ( and if the starting BFC hasn't been touched , in here as well ) , a gap in a BtS all forest start is a almost sure sign of a hidden resource.
 
I decide to make a small WB simulation of the known starting features of the map. Will refine it further as we get more intel.

To use:

-unzip it
-put the WB save in the public maps or in the Worldbuilder saves folder
-start the game
-and load it via "Play a scenario" or "Costum scenario"

It should work without problems in HoF too
 

Attachments

Thanks! I hope to be able to try it some time this weekend.
 
I agree that it's definitely a consideration we should make, that there might be a resource there (could be Aluminum though ;)). I'm still not fully convinced of which starting location is best though.

A levee will give +3 hammers in the BFC since the river is short. If we can get a more powerful start, and a great GP farm, surely that would be worth a slightly less powerful later game? We will have lots of time to make up for that I'm sure.

I also admit that part of the reason why I prefer purple over green is that I like being different. I'm sure the majority of all teams will settle in place. And I like taking risks, do something different that might give an unexpected edge.

That said, I won't be dissatisfied with a green start - but I still want to see test games played, and spreadsheets created! So thanks a lot to rolo for the WB save. :thumbsup:
 
Don't we have 4 river squares visible in the BFC (if settling in place)? And is it definite that the river is short? If not, there might be 2 more river squares to the west.

That said, I like Niklas's "different start" point in favor of purple...
 
Hey, we're tied for first in number of posts.

There are four visible river squares. If we found a city on one of them, that leaves three for our citizens to work.

My best fog gazing shows the river ends in a spring at the visible intersection. If anyone sees differently, speak up. That said, if the river continues, I think it strengthens the argument in favor of purple - because it would mean we have a solid, viable spot for our second city. The thing I don't like about green is that our currently visible locations for a second city aren't so great.

So I'm being swayed to Niklas' position - let's found on purple and use that whip!
 
Do rivers end in "springs"? I was looking at the map in the game I was playing today, and it looked like all the rivers broke down a bit into "tributaries" in their last tile, with only the tiniest blue threads extending into the next, non-river tile. But I don't know what it looks like under the fog.

We're only tied for first in posts? We've been slacking!
 
Renata, what you call "springs" is actually a delta turned backwards, and it only means that the map maker made the river to flow in the wrong direction :p

And the river definitely is that small :(
 
OK, I ran the numbers on the red city and ran this against the test file that was posted to verify my numbers. Based on what I learned, I'm 95%+ sure that purple will be a better city in the early turns, but I won't have time to run that until tomorrow morning. If anyone else feels so inclined, go for it.

Spoiler :
red.png


Here's the spreadsheet file: http://gesserit.net/smurkz/red.xls
 
Chris, you probably have you settings to show more than 20 posts per batch, which is the default.

It would be nice to know about PAs one way or the other. I would guess the do count, since I'm under the impression that you share all points with the PA partner. But I've actually never used a PA so I'm no good source of information there.

Good start on the spreadsheet! One minor error with it though - if the Warrior is queued out for 12 turns then we lose 2 hammers invested so the numbers are a bit off. But there are tweaks to be made to optimize anyway so no big deal, it's a good start of discussion. :thumbsup:

I've thought about several options for the start and it's far from obvious which will pay off the best. Clearly our first priorities are Fishing, AH and BW (and Writing), but in what order? We want a worker to pasture the cows and mine the gold, and we want workboats for the seafood, but in what order? Obviously the two questions are strongly correlated.

1. Fishing first, build a warrior while waiting for Fishing and switch out in favor of WB as soon as Fishing comes in. Then research AH and BW in some order, either BW first (as in Chris' scenario) to whip something (e.g. a second WB), or AH first to hook up the Cows fast.

2. Worker first, while researching AH. They will complete at the same time (if we settle in place, otherwise the worker will come two turns later) and we can pasture the cows immediately, then mine the gold. Second build is Warrior while we research Fishing, then (switch to) WB as soon as Fishing is in.

3. Worker first, while researching BW. BW takes 15 turns while worker takes 13 (green) or 15 (purple). Worker goes to mine gold while we research Fishing, then chops a forest for a WB.

I haven't tried any sheets to see which would be preferred, but I think we should try to look at all of them for both settle locations. I played a test game with the first scenario while settling in place, but I was too tired to draw any conclusions from it. I'll have a go at a spreadsheet now though.

Here's a challenge to all who play test games. What's the fastest you can get the Great Library?

Also, I realize that one rather crucial wonder has been more or less left out of all our discussions - Oracle! Is there any chance we could grab it? I think we definitely could, but the question is if we could use it to good effect. Sure we could get CoL from it, but that's not obviously worth the investment (though if it gives us Confusion, maybe it is...). For the record, in the games I checked the Oracle was built turn 77 by an AI at the earliest, though in one game the player built it in 83. Turn 75 seems like a last safe turn for it though.
 
Oracle would likely give us prophets for a shrine or two or three, which is not to be sneezed at regardless of what else we would get from it. I'm still not sure it's worth the effort, though -- what other routes do we have to produce several prophets?
 
Capture a town with a shrine, and run 4 priest specialists in it? There's no telling how early we could hope to get one though.

A few other wonders give points towards a GProphet, but few that we want. Only Shwedagon Paya, for which we have gold to speed up, seems at all reasonable to me. And later the Apostolic Palace, mostly for denial. Stonehenge is useless and too early, Angkor Wat, Spiral Minaret and Chichen Itza are useless (except that AW allows you to run 3 priests - perhaps not a bad idea at that point...).

So you're right - having a GP wonder early may be very useful. But I still think that we have to get something else out of it too, otherwise the cost is too high. :hmm:
 
You mean Oracle, Niklas? :p

I really don't think that we should sink our hammers in a early wonder, unless it is really valuable one. Oracle is a good one, but given that we will not have marble in time and that we are not Ind means that even on Monarch we can have a hard time getting it without chopping. given that it looks that we want to get the great Library ( right? ) , getting Mids would be far more in line.

On techs: I really think that we should open with fishing->BW.... but I haven't looked at it seriously ;)
 
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